Of our seven buyer's guides, one of the most popular configurations is that
of the budget gamer. This is likely so for a number of reasons. First off, determining
what components go in a gaming system on a budget is not an easy task. Unlike
high-end configurations, where a product's performance or feature set can distinguish
it from others in the market, budget systems must be configured with components
that balance performance with price. Secondly, consumers looking for the most
bang for the buck are usually extra picky when it comes to where their money
is spent. Ten dollars here or ten dollars there in a system that is upwards
of $3,000 is not a big deal, but when the system price is down to sub $1,000
levels every penny counts. Finally, it is likely that our budget gaming buyer's
guide is popular simply due to the fact that many of our readers are in the
market for a system such as this.

What ever the reason that you read the value gaming buyer's guide, we hope
that, like our our other buyer's guides, it provides you with valuable insight
as to what is going on in the computer industry and makes deciding what goes
in your system a bit easier. Our task in configuring a value gaming system is
a difficult one: not only must we focus on building a system that can play the
games of today and tomorrow, we are forced to pay attention to prices. The ultimate
goal of the value gaming buyer's guide is to configure a system that provides
the most (or close to the most) gaming bang for the buck.

Every component in a recommend system, from case to monitor, is covered. The
only hidden costs are shipping costs, which can add anywhere from 5% to 10%
to the total system cost depending on what you get and from where. The best
way to keep shipping costs down is to order as much as possible from a single
vendor or pick things up locally. Be sure to take a look at the AnandTech
Hot Deals Forum to see if any AnandTech readers have posted a special deal
on a piece of hardware in the recommended system. Also be sure to check out
our Weekly CPU & Video
Card Price Guide and our Weekly
Memory & Motherboard Price Guide to see if prices have been updated
since the buyer's guide was last posted.

This Week

Today we reevaluate our value gaming system. You may recall that we configured
our last value
gaming platform about seven weeks ago. At that time we put together what
we thought to be a strong gaming system at a very nice price. As is usually
the case with electronic components, the power of our value gaming system has
only improved since we last took a look at it. Overall our current value gaming
configuration shares many traits with the value gaming system recommended seven
weeks ago, but some of the components have been upgraded or otherwise changed.
On the whole, prices remained about the same, falling in some areas and rising
in others.